Although the cabinets aren’t scheduled to be installed until the first week of July, we were told we could move the date up if we’re ready sooner. That date was always a conservative estimate. Our ideal plan is to have the bulk of the demolition work done by the end of Memorial Day weekend.

This thing arrived on Friday to get the ball rolling.

We spent much of Saturday morning moving everything out of the kitchen and into either the garage or our makeshift “kitchenette” in the dining room:

After removing all of the appliances, the sink and the cabinet hardware, we started the demolition. This is what the room looked like on Saturday night: (click here for the before pictures)

On Sunday, we took up the tile floor, scraped the walls and demolished the rear closets.

Removing the old tile was a pretty painstaking job. There was really cheap 1/4″ plywood beneath the tile and nothing would budge with the standing scraper. So I spent the entire morning bent over, smashing away on each tile with a pry bar and a 3 pound hammer.

Here’s what the room looked like on Sunday night:

We had someone come over on Monday to relocate the hot water heater to the crawl space. I took a vacation day so I could get some more work done. I spent most of the day ripping up the cheap plywood subfloor, when… surprise! I found a speckled, beige 1950’s era linoleum floor beneath it:

I must have pulled about 2000 nails before I got it all up. Like I told my wife, this was one of the least enjoyable things I’ve ever done, mostly because it was the second day in a row where I had to work, inverted, with a pry bar and 3 pound hammer. Here’s a picture of the room after I finished. That greenish color is the residue from the felt that was used to pad the 1950’s era floor:

At this point, I thought I was done. But after sitting down for a little while and eating a late lunch, I thought I’d try to squeeze in one more job before my long, laborious weekend was over.

Since our old cabinets went all the way to the ceiling and our new ones won’t, we had to get rid of the “popcorn.” There are three schools of thought on how to resurface a popcorn ceiling. You can either (1) mud over the lumps, (2) hang new sheetrock over the existing ceiling, or (3) scrape it all off. I don’t have any stilts and I don’t want to buy a lot of sheetrock, so I went with the latter choice.

To soften the popcorn, I had to soak the ceiling with the “spray” setting on the garden hose every 20 minutes for an hour. It was only later when I realized the door was open and the neighbors must have had a nice view of a guy watering his kitchen ceiling in his boxer shorts.

It worked like a charm and the popcorn came off with relative ease. It was kind of like scraping frozen snow off a windshield. I didn’t have much arm strength left, so it probably felt more difficult to me than it really was.

That’s it for the first weekend. To recap, here’s where we are in regards to the plan:

1. Disassemble the dining room table and take it to the garage
2. Move all the appliances into the dining room
3. Relocate the hot water heater to the crawl space
4. Demo the existing cabinets and the rear closet walls
5. Remove the tile floor
6. Resurface the ceiling
7. Lay a new subfloor
8. Center the oven plug and add new outlets
9. Re-frame the rear wall
10. Move the dryer vent
11. Sheetrock/mud the rear wall
12. Repair and paint the walls
13. Tile the floors
14. Install cabinets and counter tops
15. Move all the appliances back into the kitchen

We’re basically done with steps 1-6, which puts us ahead of schedule. We still need to sand and patch some nicks in the ceiling, but that can be done after work this week. If we can get steps 7-11 done by next Monday night, we’ll be in really good shape.

We’ve been pretty lucky so far. Most of the surprises we’ve encountered have meant more work instead of more money. We’ll take that with a smile.

UPDATE: Kitchen Remodel 3: Making Progress

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